Monday, October 09, 2017

He needs to start deporting more Latinos if he wants to keep rural America

by digby

He's slipping in popularity with his rural base. This is good news. Sadly, the one thing he can do to get them back is to start persecuting Latinos even more than he already is. For some reason these white, rural Americans who have virtually no contact with immigrants just really, really hate them. Those of us who live among immigrants don't have that attitude.

I'm so glad these people have much more representation in our government than all of us who live in metropolitian areas do. They'll keep us pure.

Outside the Morgan County fair in McConnelsville, in a rural swath of Ohio that fervently backed U.S. President Donald Trump in last year’s election, ticket seller John Wilson quietly counts off a handful of disappointments with the man he helped elect.

The 70-year-old retired banker said he is unhappy with infighting and turnover in the White House. He does not like Trump’s penchant for traveling to his personal golf resorts. He wishes the president would do more to fix the healthcare system, and he worries that Trump might back down from his promise to force illegal immigrants out of the country.

“Every president makes mistakes,” Wilson said. “But if you add one on top of one, on top of another one, on top of another, there’s just a limit.”

Trump, who inspired millions of supporters last year in places like Morgan County, has been losing his grip on rural America.

According to the Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll, the Republican president’s popularity is eroding in small towns and rural communities where 15 percent of the country’s population lives. The poll of more than 15,000 adults in “non-metro” areas shows that they are now as likely to disapprove of Trump as they are to approve of him.

In September, 47 percent of people in non-metro areas approved of Trump while 47 percent disapproved. That is down from Trump’s first four weeks in office, when 55 percent said they approved of the president while 39 percent disapproved.

The poll found that Trump has lost support in rural areas among men, whites and people who never went to college. He lost support with rural Republicans and rural voters who supported him on Election Day.

And while Trump still gets relatively high marks in the poll for his handling of the economy and national security, rural Americans are increasingly unhappy with Trump’s record on immigration, a central part of his presidential campaign.

Forty-seven percent of rural Americans said in September they approved of the president’s handling of immigration, down from 56 percent during his first month in office.

Poll respondents who were interviewed by Reuters gave different reasons for their dissatisfaction with the president on immigration.

A few said they are tired of waiting for Trump to make good on his promise to build a wall along America’s southern border, while others said they were uncomfortable with his administration’s efforts to restrict travel into the United States.

“There should be some sort of compromise between a free flow of people over the border and something that’s more controlled,” said Drew Carlson, 19, of Warrensburg, Missouri, who took the poll.

But Trump’s “constant fixation on deportation is a little bit unsettling to me.”

The Trump administration would not comment about the Reuters/Ipsos poll.

To be sure, Trump is still much more popular in rural America than he is elsewhere.

Since he took office, “I like him less, but I support him more,” said Robert Cody, 87, a retired chemical engineer from Bartlesville, Oklahoma who took the poll.

Cody said that Trump may rankle some people with the way he talks and tweets, but it is a small price to pay for a president who will fight to strip away government regulations and strengthen the border.

Hey, nuclear showdowns are fine and dandy as long as he enables big business to poison the populace and we get rid of the Mexicans. He's got his marching orders.